Alfred M. Mayer

thumb|Alfred M. Mayer Alfred Marshall Mayer (13 November 1836 - 13 July 1897) was a United States physicist. Quotes The ancient Greek philosopher, Democritus, propounded an hypothesis of the constitution of matter, and gave the name of atoms to the ultimate unalterable parts of which he imagined all bodies to be constructed. In the 17th century, Gassendi revived this hypothesis, and attempted to develope it, while Newton used it with marked success in his reasonings on physical phenomena; but the first who formed a body of doctrine which would embrace all known facts in the constitution of matter, was Roger Joseph Boscovich, of Italy, who published at Vienna, in 1759, a most important and ingenious work, styled Theoria Philosophiæ Naturalis ad unicam legem virium, in Natura existentium redacta. This is one of the most profound contributions ever made to science; filled with curious and important information, and is well worthy of the attentive perusal of the modern student. In more recent days, the theory of Boscovich has received further confirmation and extension in the researches of Dalton, Joule, Thomson, Faraday, Tyndall, and others. Alfred Marshall Mayer, Lecture-notes on Physics (1868) Part 1 Quotes about Alfred M. Mayer ... between 1881 and 1889 ... ... he became deeply deeply interested in the discoveries relating to the condition of early man in the Prehistoric Europe#Stone Age Stone Age in Europe, and he acquired a respectable collection of their implements. A piece of elk horn from the caverns of France interested him greatly, for upon it was a rude but effective drawing representing prehistoric hunters in the chase of the reindeer. Several of these animals are shown in active flight, while one lies upon its back with its legs held stiffly upward. One day, however, an explanation of the matter came clearly to him, when his guide in Canada described the Indian custom of propping a slain deer upwards with blocks of snow so that its legs might project above the drifts, and thus the quarry could be found upon the return of the hunters. Alfred G. Mayer and Robert S. Woodward, Biographical Memoir of Alfred Marshall Mayer Biographical Memoirs of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Vol. 8 1919 https://books.google.com/books?id=uLgAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA257 243–271 (quote from p. 257; pdf at biographicalmemoirs.org) External links Alfred Marshall Mayer Category:1897 deaths Category:Physicists from the United States Category:Scientists from Baltimore Category:Members of the American Philosophical Society